


The birthday's issue

by Arienek



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Birthday, Gen, Kidnapping, M/M, Pining, Surprises, owl-hats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 09:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8096680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arienek/pseuds/Arienek
Summary: The main issue on Bokuto’s birthday is actually Kuroo’s issue. And Yakuza gang is the only solution for a certain owl's loneliness.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Five Owl Birthdays](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8095438) by [Stokrot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stokrot/pseuds/Stokrot). 



> This is a companion-story for Stokrot’s “Five owl’s birthdays” http://archiveofourown.org/works/8095438  
> Inspired by Aleksandra’s artwork  
> https://www.instagram.com/p/BKjbrDTBxJf/

 

The birthday’s issue

The main issue on Bokuto’s birthday is actually Kuroo’s issue. 

 

Bokuto’s eighteenth birthday isn’t coming until tomorrow, but Kuroo turns up on his doorstep this very evening. He’s wearing black trousers and a proper jacket. His hair is smoothed and flattened, pulled tight into a ponytail, his face green of the anxiety. He looks more like a day before his grandma’s funeral two years ago than a day before his best friend’s birthday.  
“Hoy!”, Koutarou pulls him for a bear-hug. Only then he allows the cat out of bag. “Done with checking on the new Nekoma’s captain?”  
“Oh.” Tetsurou waves his hand, dismissing the problem. “I postponed it for… For someday.”  
So it is not about the incoming Nekoma’s captaincy crisis. And all other supposed Kuroo’s worries consist mainly on one topic.  
“He…” Bokuto looks for a proper wording, then decides to rather pull another hug. He squeezes Kuroo’s arms tightly and makes sure his friends doesn’t shake anymore. “Well?”  
“I’m doing it today,” Kuroo admits. Bokuto almost kisses him on the spot, because it’s so brave and laughable and long-overdue that it should earn a kick instead.  
“It’s awesome!” he says with a certainty that makes Tetsurou’s face even greener. Bokuto laughs and kisses him on a top of his nose after all.  
“While I’m still allowed”, he explains and feels nice warmth inside seeing Kuroo’s “you are my best friend and me dating another guy will never change that” indignant face. So. Dating?  
“You’re asking Kenma out”, Bokuto says aloud to make sure it’s official.  
“Yes.” Kuroo’s voice sounds much like gloom-doom prophecy or something. That definitely won’t do. Koutarou smacks his friend’s head heavily enough to get his attention from behind the gloom veil.  
“If you approach him like that, he would think you’re kicking him out from the team, or something worse!” He marches Kuroo to the mirror with exaggerated disapproval and shows him his own face. Tetsurou drops his head.  
“He would think I’m appointing him a next captain,” he corrects. Bokuto just doesn’t get how such an awesome perspective might be considered as worse than being kicked out, but it’s all about Kenma, and understanding Kenma is Tetsurou’s strong side, not Koutarou’s. Koutarou’s strength is understanding Tetsurou.  
“Approach him as you always do,” he offers. “With T-shirt and hungry-cat-smile. Definitely with a smile.”  
Kuroo doesn’t even deny that Kenma makes his cat-like smile definitely hungry.  
“I can’t just go find him like any other day. It must be special!” he insists in the tone of voice reserved for his epic-pathetic motivational captain’s speeches, which Bokuto overtly adores.  
“He will know it’s special,” he says. Kenma is frighteningly smart after all, if he pays attention – and to Kuroo, he does pay attention.  
“I still have to show it myself somehow. It mustn’t be just blurted out like a part of strategy discussing!” – Kuroo explains, agonizing, like he usually does on those countless opportunities, when Bokuto would persuade him to just go and ask already. This level of pigheadedness calls for another hug. Bokuto does just that – hugs Kuroo again, and manages to snatch his hair-tie. A quick hassle – and Nekoma’s captain’s notorious bed-head comes back, stains of hair-gel quickly overwhelmed by tangle of blackness.  
“Now go,” Bokuto allows magnanimously. “Now there’s a chance he will recognize you”.  
“Moronic owl.” Kuroo glances into the mirror, so visibly distraught, that Bokuto almost runs to cuddle him. Almost, because, well, serves him right for pining, overthinking, procrastinating and making Bokuto worry with him, which is usually triple-worry.  
“Go and fight the match of your life!,” Koutarou encourages. “Win your prize!”  
Kuroo shots him one last broken look.  
“What if he says he rather prefer to finish the next level…?”  
“Whatever you tell him, he always claims to rather stay and play the next level,” Bokuto observes. “And you just smile and he ends up going with you anyway.”  
“It’s different.”  
And it’s really different. It’s something else entirely.  
“This time I can’t just… entangle him. Whatever he says… It’s definite.”  
Bokuto smacks him again.  
“First, you go and win him,” he instructs. “Second, you text me at once.”  
Leaving Bokuto’s flat, Kuroo has his crafty smile back again.  
“Nosy owl,” he throws for a goodbye.  
“Bye-bye, scaredy-cat!”  
*/*/*  
Bokuto lets out a small sigh after Kuroo leaves. Asking out today – that would probably make tomorrow a Day Of Date. However quiet and inscrutable Kenma might be, he would never turn Kuroo down. Nobody would. So – no happy birthday meeting for Bokuto tomorrow. Oh, well. He will endure that virtuously for Kuroo’s happiness.  
Bokuto sighs just a little.  
Text comes at the late evening. “OK. Date tomorrow” it says. Bokuto wants to call his friend and tease him mercilessly, but somehow, it feels so lame to be a second-choice company. Bokuto knows it will never be like that between him and Kuroo, yet still, today it seems more dignified to just withdraw himself away from the Kuroo-Kenma thing and let them have their first whatever they’re going to have tomorrow. Bokuto wonders about it for some time. He and Kuroo talked numerous times about preferences in general, fun in general, people in general, and on that night year ago when they got intoxicated enough with uncle Toshirou’s beer, they talked love and life-expectations and lots of embarrassing things that will never be mentioned again. Since then, Bokuto keeps himself content with his wonderful team, amazing setter, great best friend and all other friends cherishing his own awesomeness. Kuroo on the other hand, while as great a friend as he always is, as happy and excited as always with volleyball and Nekoma and stuff, he gets anxious and dreamy and slips hints from time to time – things that Bokuto sees already and definitely doesn’t want to hear in detail, like how Kenma’s stupid hair-dye makes Kuroo want to lick his temple below the stupid fringe. It’s new and scary at first, then it’s settled without much talking, how it will not change their friendship anyhow, and then it becomes old and irritating news, because seriously, how long could this futile pining take? Bokuto threatened to go and talk to Kenma himself more than once and now he’s very satisfied to see his persuasions effective at last. Later this evening, alone in his room, he feels very modestly restrained and dignified on still not calling Kuroo’s number.  
Bokuto sighs a little.  
*/*/*/*  
On the day of his eighteenth birthday, Bokuto goes for a walk. All alone. So many people called him and texted him, and just remembered to leave best wishes on his facebook, it’s really so great! He thanks and gives many likes, and cherishes all that niceness, eyes sparkling and fingers trembling from emotions. Then Akaashi calls, and other Fukurodani guys after him, and the basket of well-wishes gets filled even higher. And, as Akaashi assures him in his sleepy-calm voice, all Fukurodani members made sure to get themselves busy elsewhere, so their captain could spend the day celebrating with his family first, and Kuroo Tetsurou later, as he always does. Koutarou bursts out with exclamations of how Akaashi is a must-have part of his birthday, and then he gets silenced by Keiji’s explanations of how he and the whole team has generously retreated this time. Bokuto thanks his friends one after another, basks a bit more in Akaashi’s modest well-wishes, allows his family to pamper him with a cake and hugs and gifts, and then – he leaves. All alone on his walk, he puts on the owl-hat from his sixteenth birthday and recalls all those great birthdays with Kuroo and thinks of Akaashi’s wishes and his great devotion, because, as Keiji said, he agreed to participate into visiting his great-great aunt, the last living one and the most venomous, only to leave all day free for Bokuto with no threat of disturbing his and Kuroo’s tradition of celebrating birthdays. Such a generous act of friendship makes Bokuto even more touched, when he contemplates it, all alone in the street. He walks a bit more, hoping for Kuroo’s date to go well, missing Akaashi’s reprimands, always indirect and covered by indifference and proving how attentive he really is to Bokuto’s problems. Koutarou profoundly rejoices having such a great friends. He passes one more street, then another. He feels lonely and abandoned and there’s nobody in this world who would care of his fate, even in the day of his birthday. If the alien’s ship would land on the street and brain-wash him, nobody would notice. If the yakuza gang would attack him to steal his lungs and spleen and to tear his still-beating heart out of his body, nobody would react. Bokuto feels like the least-welcome person in the entire city of Tokyo.  
And then – yakuza gang comes for him.  
At first, Bokuto is so shocked, that he does nothing to stop the strangers. They are almost polite, yet resolute. No weapon is visible, apart from something metallic and nasty, that is currently caressing Bokuto’s cheek below the owl’s wing. Fukurodani’s captain is easily surrounded in the empty corner. Five guys dressed in black leathers in the front, one – or more – with the weapon behind Bokuto’s back. They seem young, maybe his own age. Black jackets, tattoo marks rising from their necks to chins. Bokuto is completely lost on why would a group of teenage villains approach an average – well, not so average – teenage volleyball player. Neiteher Sakusa nor any other ace would sink so low to eliminate the rival – and Bokuto’s not even in the top three!  
Oh.  
Maybe they think he’s the next most likely to make it to the top? Bokuto relishes on this thought a bit. And then he worries a bit about his kidneys, most likely going to be stolen. And then he realizes it’s not a stupid mistake.  
“Bokuto Koutarou.” One of the guys speaks, he’s voice merry and silky and malicious. He has a smooth, pretty face, framed with light-brown hair. Next to him stands the real giant – and Bokuto has seen his share of big fellows on multiple volleyball matches. This guy is really too big for anyone’s good, broad-shouldered, with white-blond hair and terrifying face: stern forehead and no eyebrows. He doesn’t speak a word, just shows Koutarou with one finger and nods. Next to him, much shorter, black-haired guy also nods.  
“You made one mistake that has to be fixed today” – he announces. “We will help you with the necessary amends.”  
Before Bokuto decides to do something stupid like running off or attacking, the pretty one robs him of his phone and wallet in two smooth, proficient movements.  
“I love your hat!” – he confesses, naughty gleam in his brown eyes. “Sit next to me in the car!”  
Relieved somehow of not being robbed of his kidney yet, Bokuto blinks in surprise.  
“What car…?”  
It turns out there’s a car, a big one, where all of them fit easily. Bokuto doesn’t just go down with no fight – he screams and swings his arms, but then the giant one just approaches him, and somebody similarly big approaches from behind, so Bokuto gets squeezed between two kidnappers, with a cold metal pressed even harder into his cheek.  
“Go with us and you won’t get hurt”, the short brunette announces calmly. “Behave – and nobody else will get hurt.”  
From behind him, a tall guy with short hair dyed blonde smiles viciously.  
“Shouldn’t there be somebody accompanying you today, Bokuto-san?” he asks.  
Bokuto pales and just goes with no more fight. It seems totally unreal, this whole affair. He allows them to pack him into the car and drive away. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, but he won’t risk any violence.  
“We won’t touch him,” the pretty one assures. He sits next to Bokuto and apparently has a great fun. “We won’t hit him… much.”  
From panicked and shocked, Bokuto goes angry. On his other side, the white-haired big guy shakes his finger at Koutarou.  
“Don’t get mad at us… yet”, the short one warns from the front seat. “The fun is only about to begin.”  
They drive for hours, with Bokuto getting by turns: infuriated, desperate, overwrought and audacious. The giant guy sits on him for a moment to prevent him from fighting, and it’s all stupid and incomprehensible and the pretty guy keeps praising Koutarou’s hat so sincerely, that he wants to break the guy’s neck on the spot. He ends up in the unknown town, confused and thirsty and totally unharmed as far. They take him to the premises, disturbingly similar to… Fukurodani Academy’s buildings?  
A school as Yakuza’s residence?  
Tall guy with blond hair, black, sticking up fringe and a shining enthusiasm of a first-year, smiles proudly at Bokuto.  
“Welcome to the pride of Date!” he says.  
“Oho-ho?”  
And so, the fun begins.  
Bokuto decides to murder them all one by one, just some time later than now. Now, he laughs himself silly and giggles and radiates happiness all over the place that is, as they explained, Date Tech High Volleyball Club’s gym in Sendai. He will probably kill his best friend first, but now, Kuroo steps out from the crowd with an epic-pathetic birthday speech, that is embarrassing and amazing and idiotic and perfect and Bokuto loves it. He will kill all his teammates some time later, but right now, they jump him and hug him and scream prizes and try to grab him and toss him up, which they actually succeed to do with help of Karasuno team members. Who will also be killed, just not right now, when they sing birthday song for Bokuto and wear silly paper owl-hats, borrowed, as Hinata proudly explains, from his little sister’s kindergarten. Bokuto laughs and gets tossed up and hugged and patted and he eats a chocolate cake and drinks some awful lemonade and swears to kill his kidnappers, if he ever meets them again. For now, he meets some new and amazing people, who announce themselves to be a Dateko Volleyball Team members and their alumni. Stripped off the black leathers, and back into gym garments, they managed to wash off the tattoos and somehow they look exactly as menacing as before. Captain Futakuchi finally borrows Bokuto’s hat, but instead of wearing it, he puts it on his friend Aone’s head. Aone tolerates it silently and he actually looks kind of cute with the owl, as former captain Moniwa instantly claims with a backup of his friend Kamasaki. Bokuto allows his new friends to keep the hat for a little while longer, while he checks out the pile of presents and fishes out the brand new owl-hat, a splendidly stupid one with cute, small braids attached.  
And then – the fun continues.  
They play some crazy, chaotic volleyball game with way too many people on both sides of the net. They spike, block, serve, set, laugh, cry, jump, run and Bokuto feels amazing as a captain of combined forces of Fukurodani and Dateko. As Kuroo points out with self-approving smile, thanks to Hinata’s connections, they managed to gather for Bokuto a properly tall players this time, so he better won’t be blaming his imminent defeat on the height difference. Bokuto serves the next ball in Kuroo’s face and appreciates the Iron Wall of his fellows and admires Akaashi actually outsmarting that Kageyama guy more than once. He has a time of his life and his team actually wins the next three sets – barely, but undoubtedly, as the amused pack of managers assures, keeping track on the points – even the ones got by serving the owl hat through the net.  
Later that evening, Bokuto is so happy and tired and feels so awesome that he almost cries. But there’s one thing that has not been addressed yet. The most important issue of that day. He drinks some more lemonade and he looks around with no success. He asks Hinata – and Hinata just goes and finds Kenma Kozume with an easy facility similar to Kuroo’s, yet not that meaningful.  
Bokuto approaches Kenma, who sits in the corner, busy with tapping the pads. Kuroo’s on the other side, shining among other captains and sharing delightfully nasty remarks with this Futakuchi guy.  
“Did Kuroo ask you out?” Koutarou asks. Kenma lifts his head and looks at Bokuto with his gold, withdrawn eyes.  
“No” he simply states, face indifferent, like it never was something to even consider. Bokuto clenches his fists. He will not allow Kuroo to make Koutarou’s birthday another excuse. He will just go and do something and…  
“No,” Kenma repeats. He surveys Bokuto for a moment, like he couldn’t decide if he’s worthy of some profound secret. Then, he apparently decides. And stands. Bokuto looks at the top of his two-color head, feeling a bit uneasy. Golden eyes look into his own with a hidden gleam of humor.  
“Don’t worry. I did it.” – Kenma whispers. “I asked him out”.  
Bokuto stares. Then he stares some more. Then he gloats.  
“I am never letting him live this one down,” he swears. “Never”.  
Kenma’s smile reaches the corner of his mouth.  
“Happy birthday.”  
And so it is.


End file.
